Day 1 the journey begins

The day before my treatment was to begin, I had take 150 mg of prednisone (an evil mean steroid) and a stomach pill. I prepped and planned and went to sleep with the amazing help and kind words of a friend in my mind all white and green healing lights.

I woke up around 3:30 am, well before my 6:45 am alarm went off. My stomach was just screaming in pain and I awoke in a sweat. I wasn’t able to fall asleep but I made my way to the couch downstairs and just laid down in the dark, with my blanket and my dogs and my music.
When Joey awoke sometime later, I knew it was time to get the show on the road. I made breakfast, packed my lunch and drinks and we were off.

The clinic was small and clean but not in an antiseptic kind of way. The nurse, Sharmela was incredible. She took all my anxious blurts and scared looks in stride and even when I had to pop some Ativan after an attempted second iv insertion gone wrong, she joked with me and apologized profusely for stabbing unnecessarily.

The day was 7 hours long from start of an of hour of corticosteroids infusions and then 4 hours of Lemtrada and 2 of monitoring
The whole time is intermixed with frequent blood pressure and fever monitoring. My blood pressure was 160 which I knew it would be because I was so damn anxious but thankfully it dropped to 130 by the end of the day.

Along with the aforementioned infusions I was also getting fluids in the same way which literally made me pee the entire day away.
I wasn’t able to catch any zzzz while there. I wanted to so badly but the thoughts kept spinning even after gravol, Benadryl, Tylenol and Ativan. I’m strong like bull. And apparently this bull needs a fucking tranquilizer to get knocked down.

I got home and immediately crashed hard for hours. I woke up, had dinner and then took the most awkward bath with this unpleasant contraption holding my iv insertion carefully in place.

I’m heading to bed and have taken the slew of meds they’ve advised align with the horribly metallic tasting sleeping pills. I am glad that my first day is over and feel calmer with the knowledge that I know what to expect. The process is certainly less scary but I am worried about the side effects which are likely to occur in 24 hours or so.

I’m laying in bed right now. Going over my day and the support around me both near and far. I wouldn’t be able to do even half of it without Joey by my side. He knows what he means to me.
Day 1 is over and I survived. To me that’s a success.
Day 2 begins tomorrow and I hope I can make it through with the very same dry sense of dark humour and lack of shame that I owned today.